Micro Knits

The world and its wife cannot have failed to notice that knitting has experienced a rapid and healthy rebirth in the past few years, particularly amongst the young and hip. It appealed to me when hanging out in a pub with a mate, hung over, when a Stitch & Bitch group swooped upon our table . Seemingly a pleasant and productive way to be sociable, I decided to give it a whirl.

This is technically my second attempt. Several people tried to teach me when I was little but had neither the time nor patience, me being a leftie. So, a tad unsure, I’ve soldiered on and am accelerating my efforts by attempting a new skill with each project. For those also looking for info, there’s an abundance of patterns, guides, suppliers and forums available on Ravelry.com and fab, easy to grasp video tutorials on YouTube.

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Project One – A Baby’s Hat

[casting on, rib, stockinette, pompom]

With a new niece/nephew looming, I opted for a simple hat to practice casting on, rib stitch and stockinette. The results were…mixed at best.

Although the finished article looks as intended, it is actually microscopic; far too small for a newborn and so was gifted to my niece’s dolly. Waste not, want not. The sizing problem was due to several issues: firstly, a confusion over the needle sizes, my not realising that US ones are different to both English Imperial and Metric. Bum. Avoid this blunder with a handy conversion chart found here > size guide. Secondly, I underestimated the importance of setting the gauge ie. the tension, so small needles, fine yarn and tight tension = vastly reduced size.

You can see the obvious, but neat, stitch decreases here. Unfortunately it highlights how shallow the hat is, and gives more of a peaked look than the rounded bowl I was aiming for.

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The bottom brim is in rib, which tends to roll up, and the above is supposed to be stockinette. Grr!

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So, a mere four fundamental mistakes in my first attempt. Thank goodness the pompom was child’s play.